Genette dad’s deathbed plea: It’s been 40 years, please find my lost girl
Appeal for answers over 13-yr-old’s fate
THE father of missing Genette Tate has made a heartbreaking deathbed plea to find his daughter, four decades after she vanished.
Genette, 13, disappeared while doing a paper round near her home on August 19, 1978, triggering what became one of the country’s most infamous missing person cases.
Two friends discovered the schoolgirl’s bicycle on a narrow country lane in the village of Aylesbeare, near Exeter, Devon. No body has ever been found. After four decades of agony, dad John, now 76, feels time is running out to lay his girl to rest as he battles serious illness. He recently suffered a major stroke and also has diabetes, McArdle’s disease and prostate cancer.
John has only just been released from hospital and is too unwell to make his annual pilgrimage to Aylesbeare from his Manchester home. He said: “My life is coming to an end.
“I dearly want to know where Ginny is.
“Just to know that she has been found and given a Christian burial would be enough. I could go to my grave in the knowledge that we were together again.” Police initially treated Genette’s disappearance as a missing person case but it later became a murder inquiry.
Cold case detectives eventually identified Scottish serial child killer Robert Black as their prime suspect. He died in a Northern Ireland prison in January 2016, days before he was to be charged with her murder. After his death, police met John and gave detailed reasons why they believed the van driver was Genette’s killer. They included his history of similar abductions and petrol receipts showing he was in the area.
Devon and Cornwall police said: “Black was our main suspect and we approached the CPS with a recommendation to charge.
“Currently there isn’t an active investigation.”
Genette’s mum Sheila, who lives in Bristol, previously said of Black’s death: “It would have been an empty charge. We still wouldn’t have known what happened or where she is.”
John echoed her words yesterday, saying: “It annoys me when people say to me you have got closure. We’ll probably never have closure – especially now the only suspect is dead. I am not even 100% sure Black did it.
“I need proof that Black killed her. If we could just find her body then that could give me the proof I need.”
He added: “I haven’t heard from police since January 2016.
“That’s why I had to do this because everyone else seems to have given up on her – but with my last breath, I will not.”
My life is coming to an end. I dearly want to know where she is
JOHN TATE FATHER OF MISSING TEEN GENETTE